307 – MG USAF (ret) John Borling of Rockford, IL A Vietnam Combat Veteran, Hanoi Hilton Survivor, Author & Founder of S.O.S.

Transcript:

Tom Couch: [00:00:00] Special thanks to Horizon Therapeutics for sponsoring the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast, working tirelessly to research, develop, and bring forward medicines for people living with rare and rheumatic diseases. Discover more about Horizon Therapeutics mission at HorizonTherapeutics.com.

John Borling: The Texans wanted to do something small for you. So they had this party in the Cotton Bowl. And I can remember talking to the governor of Texas. I said, “Look, this is gonna be low key.” He said, “Son, this is about low key as we Texans get”, he said. And Nixon did the big party at the White House in May of ’73.

Tom Couch: That’s our guest this week, retired Major General John Borling, a Purple Heart veteran and former fighter pilot in the United States Air Force. John flew 97 missions into Vietnam before being shot down. He was then captured by the North Vietnamese and spent six plus years in the infamous Hanoi Hilton.

Tom Couch: In that time, he wrote and memorized a [00:01:00] series of poems, with no pens or pencils, by tapping on the prison walls. That tapping, those poems, would later be transcribed into a book called Taps on the Walls: Poems from the Hanoi Hilton, which is available now on Amazon. It’s an inspiring conversation we’ll hear this week on the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast.

Tom Couch: Now say hello to the founder of the Special Fathers Network and host of the Dad to Dad Podcast, David Hirsch.

David Hirsch: Hi and thanks for listening to the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast presented by the Special Fathers Network, a dad to dad mentoring program for fathers raising children with special needs.

David Hirsch: The Special Fathers Network MasterMind Group experience is the most comprehensive program the 21st Century Dads Foundation offers. Dads raising children with special needs meet virtually on a weekly basis and form meaningful relationships while sharing weekly wins and successes, discussing books and sharing heartfelt challenges. One of the highlights of the year is attending an in-person weekend retreat. [00:02:00] We’re launching 10 new MasterMind groups in 2024 with 10 dads per group. That means we’re only looking for 10 like-minded dads in each community. If you’re a dad raising a child with special needs, we hope you’ll join a local MasterMind group and make the investment to become the best version of yourself. For more information, please see the show notes or simply go to 21stCenturyDads.org.

Tom Couch: So now let’s hear this conversation between Major General John Borling and David Hirsch.

David Hirsch: I’m thrilled to be talking today with my friend John Borling of Rockford, Illinois, father of two, grandfather of two, who’s a retired Major General in the United States Air Force, Purple Heart veteran, Vietnam veteran, who was a fighter pilot, who had 97 combat missions before being shot down in 1966, northeast of Hanoi. He was held captive as a prisoner of war in the infamous Hanoi Hilton for six and a half years. He wrote a book entitled, Taps on the Walls: Poems from the Hanoi Hilton. John is also founder of SOS, which stands for Service Over Self. John, thank you for [00:03:00] taking the time to do a podcast interview for the Special Fathers Network.

John Borling: Pleased to be with you, David. It’s always good to be in the company of such an esteemed leader of many.

David Hirsch: Oh, you’re too nice.

John Borling: I’m too honest.

David Hirsch: [David chuckles] Okay. You and your wife, Myrna, have been married for 61 years and are the proud parents of two children and two grandchildren. Let’s start with some background. Where did you grow up? Tell me something about your family.

John Borling: South side of Chicago. Typical middle class family. Grew up a block from my public school, Cornell, which no longer exists. Went to Hirsch High School, which is across the street. That was very handy. And lived in Chatham or Grand Crossing. I met my wife Myrna while in high school. She was from South Shore, the correct side of the tracks, and she’s made me what I am today. You focused on, long ago, far away on the POW stuff. I had a hell of an Air Force career. I had a great time after that long interregnum. I said it took 6 and a half years because I’m a slow learner, but the reality was that we then were on a very fast [00:04:00] track and then had enormous opportunity. Some frankly provided, some earned. You find out you do it on the backs and with the support of others as you get a little older and more cognizant of horizons.

John Borling: But we lived from Minot, North Dakota to Laredo, Texas. We lived four or five times in Washington. Both our daughters were born in California. Had a good growing up period and typical stuff. Young bull in the forest and wondering if your dad’s got his head screwed on straight and then you finally figure out not only has he got it screwed on straight, he’s been formative in your life. And my mother who had a great sense of humor as well. So I was very fortunate.

John Borling: And as I say, my dad was an accountant and then he became a salesman. We were fortunate that my grandfather, he was the first generation after the guys immigrated from the old country and was head of the civil service in Chicago. Had the foresight to go up and buy a plot of land on a small lake in Michigan, which has been a mooring point for our family since the twenties. And I now have owned it [00:05:00] outright for 40 years, 50 years, but everyone still comes. I just get to pay. And it’s a great thing.

John Borling: We came back home to Chicago after 10 years in Europe, 10 years in Asia, all around the country like I told you about. Flying fighters, flying bombers and tankers and all kinds of exciting stuff and commanding and being on staff and doing work that was fulfilling, challenging. But came back home to Chicago. We moved back to Hyde Park and started out in the civilian world.

David Hirsch: Okay. I’m going to dial back just so I make sure that I’ve got an understanding about your family. When you were growing up, did you have any siblings?

John Borling: I’ve got a sister who’s three years younger than I am, and we lived in a home. Upstairs was my uncle and aunt who had an older cousin, Sharon, who still lives. She’s about two years older than I am. And then there was a younger cousin, Janet, who’s passed. And my sister’s out in Albuquerque. We are a nuclear family from that standpoint, but converse and talk and share and all that good stuff.

John Borling: But growing up in that two-tiered circumstance in a [00:06:00] home that my great grandfather helped build had a lot of meaning. The old church organ was up in the attic and we’d roam this what we thought was a very spacious house as kids. And when my dad was a hundred, I took him back to the old house. I knocked at the door a week or so prior and the lady answers the door, black lady. I’m very gracious. And I’m standing there with my bios and credentials and trying to blurt out why I wanted to come back to the house and take Dad through the house at age 100. And she said, “Oh, you’re John.” I said, “Yes, ma’am.” And she said, “You’re the one who was lost in the war. I bought the house from your parents.” And so we went back there and roamed through the house, both up and down. She lived on one floor, and she had a renter on the bottom floor where we lived. But we got to go into the basement, and there were the old furnace, and there was a fan in the attic, and there was stuff from all those years gone by.

John Borling: So that was a step back, and I was happy to take Dad there. He was still mentally sharp at age 100. We went up and she gave us [00:07:00] coffee. And I said, “Oh, you must be Swedish. You give them coffee.” And she said, “Actually, I am.” And I said, “You are?” And she said, “Yeah. my mother was Swedish, married a black guy, grew up in Bronzeville. Bought this house from your mom and dad. And that’s all I have left over from my family.” And she pointed over to the wall and I took notice of some plates. And I didn’t pay much notice. And she says, “I really need to do this and do that. And I’d like to join my son in Albuquerque actually. But I got to sell the house and I got to do this and that. And I don’t have the money to make the relocation.”

John Borling: And I was drinking the coffee and I took another look over on the wall. And I went over and grabbed one of the plates and turned it over. And it’s a signed Bjorn Wiinblad, pre-war, with a smiley face, which means this hung in his house. And in fact, I’ve got Wiinblad stuff that hangs in our house. And I said, “You know what you have on your wall?” She had maybe 20 plates. She said, “That’s all I have left from my mother.” I said, “I think you’ve got over $50,000 worth of plates sitting on your kitchen wall.” And she did. I don’t know what the exact number was, but she sold them [00:08:00] all and was able to live out her dream.

John Borling: I guess there’s a story there, David. We all get, maybe not to live the whole dream, but boy, it’s nice when you get to live a piece of it, just a piece of it.

David Hirsch: Absolutely. Yeah, thank you for sharing. So I’m thinking about your dad, and I’m curious to know, I know that he lived a very long and healthy life but I’m wondering how you would characterize your relationship with your dad.

John Borling: Oh, troubled. He was much more conservative than I was. And I didn’t recognize how important he was until I went through that rebellious stage as a junior, senior in high school. And I was a good student, president of my class, National Honor Society, all that stuff, football player. But I remember the day. Sitting in that house I was telling you about, that spacious house. 735 square feet.

David Hirsch: Oh my.

John Borling: We were in heaven. And that’s what they had upstairs, about 800, me and another room up in the attic. So anyway, but we’re in the front room, this little front room is probably 10 by 15. And my ROTC instructor, Sergeant Joe Eric, was sitting there talking with my dad. And I’m saying to my dad, “Yeah,” being the [00:09:00] typical teenager guy, and saying, to the sergeant, “Yes sir.” And the next thing I know, this little guy has got me, this little Jewish master sergeant, he’s got me up against the wall. He bangs me hard against the wall. And he said, “You call me sir. You call your father sir.” And I said, “Yes, sir.” And that was the last time I ever called my dad anything but dad or father or sir.

John Borling: And I learned that lesson at 16 and a half, 17, from a World War II sergeant, who was formative in my life. He gave me the highest award, David, I’ve ever received. And I’ve been recognized more than a person deserves for this and that.

John Borling: But the night I graduated from high school I made this terrible speech. I read the damn thing. And that was the last speech I ever read. I remember sitting down and saying, boy, that is the worst graduation speech ever given. Anyway, I walk out after the ceremony, cursing myself for being such a terrible public speaker. But he grabs me and he gives me a manly hug. He looks me in the [00:10:00] eye and said, “I wish you were my son.” I still tear up when I think about that because I went away that night and I never saw Joe Eric again. Ended up going to college for a year and a half and then the academy and then off to war and married and stuff. And throughout life to this day, if I hit a fork in the road or it’s a decision point and I have asked myself, what would Joe want me to do? And if I’ve done that, boy, it’s been great. If I haven’t, if I bucked it and gone my own road, it’s been a bloody disaster. And God, I tried to find him after the war. We spent thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours trying to chase him down because I just wanted to say thank you, and I never found him.

David Hirsch: I think of people like Joe as the angels in our lives. Maybe you don’t realize it at the time, but when you start to reflect you realize the pivotal role that they played in your life and he’s still playing in your life. You’re talking about him today, right? You’re 80. He’s long gone, right?

John Borling: 80, 84. But I’ve got a long runway left. I got a lot to do. We’ve got miles to go before we sleep, as Robert Frost suggests.

David Hirsch: My recollection was that you started your education [00:11:00] at the University of Illinois, went to Augustana College. And then finished up your undergraduate, if you will, at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, graduating in 1963. Did you go right into the service from there, or what was your trajectory?

John Borling: I was in the service for four years at the Academy. I got a discharge. And the discharge they gave you in one hand, you raised your hand with the other, and you got sworn in as a second lieutenant, and it was right off to pilot training. We went to Laredo by choice. Could have gone to any base, any flying base. When I went to the Air Force Academy, I really wanted to go to West Point, but I failed the test for West Point, coming right outta high school. In fact, West Point had sent me as one of six high school seniors from Chicago to be so honored to fly back and spend a weekend at West Point with the third class, the yearlings. They just came away totally imbued. And I was in Army ROTC and I was a battalion commander and all that stuff. I had great feelings about the military and I had collected war relics, because the South [00:12:00] Side was awash in war relics after World War II. You could pick up anything.

John Borling: I tried out for Annapolis, and in Annapolis, I was up at Great Lakes, passed all the tests, and I’m taking the physical. That’s no big deal. You’re gonna do all pull ups and throw balls and stuff. And the Petty Officer calls me over and he says, “You’re not gonna make it.” And he showed me the clipboard and there was a checkmark that said, “Extreme ugliness. Rejected on account of extreme ugliness,” which I know is not strange for you. And your podcast people can’t see what you’re dealing with here but try to bear up, please.

John Borling: What happened, I’d gone over the handlebars of my bike and my two front teeth had an inverted V. I was taken out by that senior cousin I was telling you about in a bike race around. So I didn’t go to Annapolis. And to finish the story, although it happened a little out of sequence, I didn’t pass my serology for the Air Force, which meant that I had a social disease.

John Borling: So there I was, dumb, ugly, with a social disease. Eventually, you’ll be a great candidate to be an Air Force fighter pilot. [David chuckles] Now, in [00:13:00] truth, that was a gross mistake. That would have been up there with the virgin birth and such. Chain of custody thing. And by the time they got it straightened away at Janoot, we were past the entry point. We ended up 14th rather than 13th, which I needed to get into the class of ’62.

John Borling: So I’m down to Augustana. Wonderful opportunity down there. Formative, debate team, oratory, literature, wonderful liberal arts school, fraternity on the whole. I’m deep into it, but try it again for the account. And this time got all three. Myrna and I were already talking about being married. And so I remember calling her from a phone booth down by the railroad tracks in Rock Island down the hill from where we were living. I said, “Hey, I’ve got the appointment to the Academy.” And I said, “I know we were talking serious stuff. You’re going to have to wait four plus years. Because I’m going.” And you know what she said? She said, “You have to do this. I want you to do this. This is breakout stuff.” So she became a big booster of me, even though we had a thing. She was dating. I was, as much as you could date. The Air Force Academy is hardly a party school.

John Borling: But they took us back to [00:14:00] Lowry where the interim academy had been. And they had T-33s, T-Birds. It’s a tandem jet. It’s a training jet. And they gave us a 30-minute orientation ride. And I’ve been in an airplane three times, to and from West Point and once flying out to the Academy. And in every case I wore a suit and tie because flying was special in those days.

John Borling: But so I’m in there in a flying suit and I got my parachute pack and my helmet and all that stuff. And the first two guys who flew did not have a good occasion. They got sick, and the cockpit was a little smelly, and the pilot who was a Korean Air Force fighter pilot was not all that happy. And it was going to be his last flight of the day, and he was looking forward to that last flight of the day. And he was saying, “Alright, how do you think you’re going to do?” I said, “I don’t know, but I’m really excited about doing this. I want to do it.”

John Borling: So I hopped in and we started and he let me taxi a little bit and we should ride through the controls with me as we made the takeoff and was telling me how to fly in a left, up, down, up. He said, “All right, your airplane.” And gave me the airplane. And for the [00:15:00] next 35, 40 minutes, other than him giving some instructions and stuff, and doing the pitch out and landing, which I stayed with him on, I flew the whole sortie and everything. I didn’t do it very well, but loops and cuminates and rolls and zooms and stuff. And he had to give some help, obviously, I’m not a qualified pilot. But it just felt so natural. It felt so good, and we came in and rolled through it. He grabbed me afterwards, he’s got me by the shoulders, and he said, “What do you think, what do you think?” I said, “I have to do this. I have to be a fighter pilot.”

John Borling: And I devoted myself from that moment on to trying to achieve the physical, mental, other skills necessary that would lead to becoming a fighter pilot. And so here we’re down in Laredo and Myrna and I have been married 15 days after graduation in the ’60 Chevy in July of ’63, unairconditioned. We drive into Laredo, Texas. And I told her, I said, “We want to live as close as we can to a foreign country. That’s going to be a motto of ours. We’re going [00:16:00] to have as many foreign activities as we can.”

David Hirsch: When I think of you, John Borling, I think about overcoming adversity in a lot of different ways. You’ve just shared a little bit of your passion, right? That very first time you had a chance to be a pilot on a training type of vehicle. And I’m wondering, before you were shot down on your 97th combat mission at age 26, what was the most challenging situation you’d encountered up until that point in time?

John Borling: It would be the constant fear that I wouldn’t graduate from the Air Force Academy. And I was driven by a combination of apprehension, if you will, and the desire to excel and persevere. My class started with 800 basically, and we graduated 499. And then you had to graduate high in your class to be eligible for a fighter airplane. Anyway, I graduated number one in my class and got a fighter and the rest is history until I ended up going to Strategic Air Command as a colonel.

Tom Couch: We’ll be back with more of the conversation on the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast in [00:17:00] just a few moments, but first this quick message. Please help 21st Century Dads gather research on families raising children with special needs by having them complete the Special Fathers Network Early Intervention Parents Survey. A link to the survey can be found in the show notes. As a token of our appreciation, each person, mom or dad, who completes the survey will receive a Great Dad Coin. Thank you. Now, back to the conversation.

John Borling: It was the urge to get to combat. We were afraid that the war would be over before we had a chance to get there. You said 97 missions, and that’s right. You were supposed to fly 100. I actually had about 115. But I had to quit counting because I had put paperwork in to fly another 100.

John Borling: When I called Myrna back in the States, we had orders to England. And I said, “Look, I’m going to stick around and fly another 100 missions. This is what I was cut out to do.” And Myrna said, “If that’s what you want to do, then you’ve got to do it.” And a day or two after that phone call, I got shot down on that mission north of Hanoi.

John Borling: I got [00:18:00] captured because there was no, I didn’t give up, but I tried to hijack a truck and being from the south side of Chicago, you’d think I’d have those skills. But I couldn’t walk. I’d broken my back and I’d had a bunch of, I couldn’t walk. I was all sprained up. I got out low and fast and hit the ground and rolled down a hill. I was rolled up in a heap at the bottom and then managed to get into the brush and into a log and evade capture for the initial sweep because we were right in the middle of a heavily populated area.

John Borling: The arrangement was to, you give up or there was no rescue available. But I elected to go for broke and break the rules and try to hijack a truck and have them take me to the coast, which is only 14 minutes away. Of course, that’s at 50 miles an hour, so it would be a little longer overland. And then I was going to steal a boat and go south. And so I got my gun out and had to literally sit in the road because the first truck swept by was on the side of the road, and I got the guy stopped, and I managed to hijack a truck full of North Vietnamese regular troops, which is a management decision [00:19:00] I have reviewed a time or two. It turned out that I got guns coming out everywhere and I elected not to die in a ditch that night and that started the long period of time in Hanoi.

David Hirsch: So I’m wondering how your training prepared you for being held as a POW.

John Borling: Oh poorly. I don’t think you’re ever ready for that. I’d been through survival school and stud and all of those things. In fact, I was a survival instructor at the Academy for two years. But it wasn’t survival that was the consideration. Number one, you were a loner or isolation, or semi-isolation for a number of years. And then it changed three, four years out. They started grouping you together and then finally into a big compound kind of group after the Sante raid in 1970 and Ho Chi Minh’s death. But the early years were brutal and it’s well-documented.

John Borling: But the annealing force, we communicated with using a tap code that we derived on the wall that I talk about in my book. By the way, that book was a mental activity. There was nothing to write with. We didn’t have any materials. [00:20:00] So it was literally composed and memorized and kept memorized. So my wife and little girl who was three months old when I left, Lauren, seven and a half when I walked in the door. So they would have legacy in case I didn’t make it because I tapped it through the walls to the guys and said, “Hey, memorize some of this stuff. And if I don’t make it for whatever reason, let this be legacy.” So that was part motivation.

John Borling: And so you have to make time an ally and you have to have, you keep your mind and you have to keep faith. And the guys I was with, the fighter pilots up there in North Vietnam, it wasn’t about survival. It was about survival with honor. We wanted you all to be proud of us. And if there’s a motivating factor in life that makes a difference in people’s lives, it’s can you make yourself, and maybe if you’re lucky, your family members, proud of yourself. And that’s powerful motivation. And I was so honored to serve with so many great men up there.

David Hirsch: Speaking of family, you get shot down, you’re taken as a prisoner of war, you’re probably a MIA for whatever period of time. When was it that Myrna knew [00:21:00] that you were still alive?

John Borling: My name got smuggled out at a truce way about three years out. Myrna will tell you the story, and Myrna is a private person. As a matter of fact, that book that I composed in my mind, I buried it for 40 years because there were poems in there I’d written to Myrna. She didn’t want that published. And then John McCain and others came to me and said, “Hey, you got to publish that stuff.” And Myrna relented, and we published it. But in her case, she tells a story. This is her story, not mine, that everyone thought I was dead. My wing commander, who stopped by, Joe Wilson, told Myrna that if anyone was going to make it, John was going to make it. But he told me after the war, he said, “I thought you were dead too, but I wanted to give Myrna something to pick up on.” [both laughing]

John Borling: But Myrna said to everybody, she said, “I can feel it. I can feel it.” And then after a bunch of years, or a few years she couldn’t feel me anymore. And there came a crying kind of evening, she relates, holding our little girl, now three, three and a half. Myrna said, “You got to do something, God. You got to do something, because I can’t take it.”

David Hirsch: So while you were a prisoner of war, three years into it, were you able to communicate with Myrna at all before you were released?

John Borling: Never, no letters, no [00:22:00] nothing. We were not authorized. But anyway, so there she is, coming apart at the seams. And it’s Saturday night, and the doorbell rings. She goes to the door and there’s two guys in uniform. Bad sign. She’s going down for the count. And she hears, “He’s alive.”

David Hirsch: Yikes!

John Borling: As I said, that’s Myrna’s story, not mine. But she hung in there, took care of the little ones. Lauren, who is more like me. We had a daughter after the war, Megan, and Megan’s more like her mom. And Lauren, the one who where I wasn’t present is a carbon copy in terms of attitude and humor and resiliency and all that stuff. Anyway drives her mother crazy.

David Hirsch: So the big date in the Borling Family is February 12, 1973.

John Borling: That’s an important date. We get caught up in the stuff right away. Coming back to the outpouring of affection and regards from the nation was extraordinary. But you could fall into a trap, and I was falling into it, of being “a professional POW.” Everybody wants you to speak, Irv Kupcinet wanted you on the radio, Boy Scouts wanted you to do this. [00:23:00] The Texans wanted to do something small for you, so they had this party in the Cotton Bowl. [both laughing] And I can remember talking to the governor of Texas. I said, “Look, this is going to be low key.” He said, “Son, this is about as low key as we Texans get these days.” And Nixon did the big party at the White House in May of ’73, where they gave us the run of the place. And they opened up the whole White House. We could just run through it at our leisure.

John Borling: Years later, when I was a White House Fellow, very fortunate to be in such a esteemed program, Rex Scout was standing down by the East Room one day and we’re looking at some stuff. He remarked, he said, “You know that party, it’s the biggest one ever thrown at the White House. It was the best party. Nobody stole anything.” And that was the night, I remember the night of that party because Myrna got kissed by, in order, John Wayne, Bob Hope and Sammy Davis Jr. And she said of the three, she thought that Sammy Davis was the best smoocher. But not to be outdone, I don’t think I’ve ever related this story, but I got to lay one on Phyllis Diller. [David laughing] I thought that was probably [00:24:00] the short end of the stick, but that’s the way it goes. All right.

David Hirsch: So I had a question. You went through a lot, it’s almost indescribable. It’s been a well told story, like you’ve said. You’ve spoken a lot over the years, decades. Did you have, with the benefit of hindsight, PTSD from your experience? Or any other ramifications that you’ve wrestled with since then?

John Borling: It’s interesting because I go down, I leave tomorrow for Pensacola, where the Navy has been running at the Mitchell Center a physical and psychological evaluation over a period of time, over at least 50 plus years. And this is to see what’s falling off prematurely because of the experience. And I’m proud to say I’m in the 90th percentile.

John Borling: David, everything’s falling off prematurely. No, I think I’m one of the fortunate guys. A lot of guys have died of the 480 or so who were there. I thought back about the loss with our squadron, in seven months we lost a third of the squadron. These are World War II loss rates kind of thing in some cases. But none of us, hell, I thought I was invincible, that’s why I [00:25:00] volunteered for another hundred.

John Borling: A lot of us made a commitment, and we talked about it, especially toward the end, we were all together about, hey, if we get out of here, we owe a lifetime of payback, one way or another. And I can remember talking to John McCain about that. Nixon, again I’ll quote him, he said, “No person is truly whole until you have commitment outside of self.”

John Borling: And you and I share a person who is a mentor. He was my fourth grade mentor and founder of the White House Fellows Program, and that was John Gardner, as you and I have talked on hundreds of occasions. God, we go back a long way, don’t we?

David Hirsch: I think this would be a good way to segue. I want to talk about two more things. One is not for profit, Service Over Self, SOS. And then I’d like to talk about Taps on the Walls. So let’s talk about SOS. What’s the backstory? When did you start that? What’s the mission? Put that in perspective.

John Borling: SOS America, Service Over Self America, argues that it would be to the benefit of the nation if the 80 percent or 85 percent of America’s young people who don’t qualify for military service [00:26:00] would have an opportunity to serve in the military, assuming that they could take care of themselves physically and mentally. If the military is a respected institution, in fact it’s the most respected institution, it would be good if more people were exposed to it, especially people that can’t qualify for being in the all-volunteer force. And SOS America had that aim. So somewhere between 18 and 25, even if you had a run-in with the cops, even if you had drugs, even if you didn’t have a GED or a high school education, you could come into the military and the idea would be there would be a second tier.

John Borling: So you’d be in a group of a hundred people and you’d have a real sergeant, a couple of company grade officers, and you would access, train and serve as that company. So you get the loyalty of that small group. It’s an escape road in many respects. You’re cruising down, you’re a young blood, you’re rolling, you’re doing crazy things like most young men, and then all of a sudden you’re going off the road and you need an escape route. And that escape route could well be the military. You fail out [00:27:00] of college, only 4 out of 10 graduate from college anyway. But for a young man to fail out of college, boy, this is, it’s killer to self-esteem. But if you could say, hey, I’m going to take my military service now. Or you’re a minority guy and you’re trying to get out of Harlem or out of the south side of Chicago and you don’t see a way out, here’s a way out.

John Borling: And you don’t have to have all the credentials. And you’re going to be brought in under the UCMJ, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and you are going to serve. And if you serve honorably for it used to be a year, we’ve now got it up to 18 months. If you serve for 18 months, there will be a volume of offers that occur. If you’re an illegal alien, you’ll get automatic citizenship. We’ll make sure that if you don’t have a high school degree, we’ll fight you through to get your GED and more. We’ll give you an educational stipend. If you’ve had a run-in with the cops and you’re not a hardcore felon, we’ll make sure your books get cleaned, purged, if you’ve served honorably. If you’ve got student debt, we’ll pay the last third of it. This would be part of the [00:28:00] legislation, and we’ve been working to get the legislation.

David Hirsch: Now what I love about SOS and your vision is that it’s building community. And going back to John Gardner, that’s what he was all about, was how do we build community? Bring people together who might not otherwise come together.

David Hirsch: I’d like to talk about Taps on the Walls. And the Taps on the Walls: Poems from the Hanoi Hilton came out in 2013, so about 11 years ago now. And you had mentioned previously that these were poems that you had memorized, right? This is your therapy getting through the six and a half years at the Hanoi Hilton, and that you recorded shortly after you were released, but you didn’t do anything with for 40 years.

David Hirsch: So there’s a lot of favorite aspects of this to me, but there’s some symbolism that I wanted to start with, which was the back cover image of this cup, this green cup. And dozens of these wristbands. What’s the back story?

John Borling: The bracelets, you called them wristbands, but they were both silver and copper bracelets with my name on them. And all the POWs had these bracelets with their names on them. [00:29:00] And thousands of these things were sold, distributed, during our absence, expressing solidarity. And when we got back, we started getting these things back. And Myrna and I, in fact, I had a card printed up where I would send thank you note as well along with the card. And we spent months of effort sending cards and a lot of money. Stamps to send all this stuff out expressing gratitude to the many people who felt connected to us.

John Borling: Now, the strange story, David, is that these bracelets and the cup which I smuggled out of North Vietnam, that cup had everything in it you can imagine. And you saw it was scarred, and that’s because it was also used as a weapon by the people. You get beat up all the time in the early days. And then there was serious torture, but that’s again well-recorded. Lucky we got through that. And at the 40-year point… By the way, if you talk to “the old vets,” you got to be careful that you’re not talking to the bullfrogs. You know what a bullfrog is?

David Hirsch: No.

John Borling: A bullfrog is an old vet sitting at the bar, [00:30:00] recounting war stories with other old vets, some of which even border on the truth. [David chuckles] But anyway, the reality is that the 40-year point is the break point. The guys talk about the quiet of our musings back and forth about, yeah, it’s okay. I can talk about the war now. You didn’t want to talk about it a lot, or if you did, you wanted it in superficial terms. So that’s where the 40 years came from.

David Hirsch: There’s a particular poem in here, one that really caught my attention and it really coincides with the sort of narrative that I’ve been spending so much time at the last 27 years advocating for father involvement, the title of which, “Mommy, Where Is My Daddy?” And I’m wondering if you can reflect on that poem.

John Borling: Well, “Mommy, Where Is My Daddy?” I would do a Christmas poem. The book’s in four parts. There’s a fly-in part. Then there’s a deep POW, human nature dark and bitter part that delves into the recesses of the soul. Then there’s a holiday, family, Thanksgiving, Christmas [00:31:00] kind of thing. And then there’s a long epic poem at the end. Anyway, the point that I was going to mention in this book that “Mommy, Where Is My Daddy” was a Christmas poem that I wrote. And I envisioned my little girl laying in bed and hearing her mother pacing on Christmas Eve, and she communicates to her mentally with the story…

John Borling: I hear you walking in the night. You think I’m fast asleep, though your sounds of loneliness I hear you pray and weep. You think that I’m too young to know the agony and the pain of missing the man gone away in search of war and fame. He didn’t come home with all the rest. It’s been four years and more. His squadron mates don’t know his fate. Old, cruel, endless war. I try to fill the gap he’s left. For emptiness adjust. I love him. So he’s just a dream and picture that we dust. Oh mommy, where is my daddy? Won’t he ever be coming home? You say he loves us very much, but he’s left us so long alone.

John Borling: And I sent that piece through and then sent the piece through of Myrna answering and then [00:32:00] me answering them on this Christmas Eve. And the upshot of it was I didn’t get much of a reaction from the guys on the other side of the wall. Until maybe a day or so later they came back. They said, “Hey, on that poem you sent through for Christmas. We got this suicide pact going and we thought you’d like…” So that was a tearjerker and it still is.

David Hirsch: Oh, yeah.

John Borling: It’s our “Mommy, Where Is My Daddy” and my daughter Lauren just immediately comes apart at the seams, but it was meant to be there. Then there was the other Christmas and you know a part of Christmas There’s a whole bunch of Christmas poems in there. And then, as I said, that epic poem.

David Hirsch: I’m thinking about advice now, John. You know that most of our listeners are parents raising children with disability or kids with special abilities. And I’m wondering what type of advice would you offer parents, specifically the dads, who maybe weren’t dealt the hand that they were anticipating?

John Borling: I think my words would be like tinkling brass, because if you’re dealing with a special needs child, you’re walking down [00:33:00] paths that the rewards come hard, I’m sure. The commitment is to be esteemed. You and I had talked earlier about the quest for wisdom, and I often think of our purpose in life and what it ought to be, what it can be.

John Borling: And this recurring vision of this mythical guy, Sisyphus, comes to mind. The guy who was consigned to push rocks up the mountain, never getting to the summit and having the rocks roll back down on him. Camus, Albert Camus, being a bit intellectual here, as it were, wrote a book called The Myth of Sisyphus. And he contended that Sisyphus was a happy man because he had something to do. I view it a little differently. I think we gotta lay the lash on Sisyphus, and have him get the rocks up and over the top of the hill, and then watch it roll down the other side, and then run down after it which is, of course, another hill. And I suspect in the lives of so many of your listeners that it’s just one rock up the hill, maybe down to the valley, back up the [00:34:00] hill.

John Borling: But it’s not just your chore, I think it’s the chore of maybe greater mankind that are… That meaning, meaning in life comes from pushing our own rocks up our own hills, and doing it again and succeeding, sometimes failing. Having to go back and start it up again. And it’s a great feeling to get them up and over the hill a little bit and watch it roll down, at least that momentary sense of gratification. And in those small moments, private moments where there’s a rock rolling down the hill for a while,take satisfaction. I know I do.

John Borling: I had a friend tell me earlier, he’s an editor of a major magazine. And he said, “I’m not in the business of raising children. I don’t urge it. I urge them to be in the business of raising adults.” And then that again cuts two ways, doesn’t it? David, you throw me an awfully hard question at the end. I’ve tried to respond both seriously, maybe a little lightly as well. I think it takes both attitudes to keep pushing rocks.

David Hirsch: Yeah, I like what you said is that there’s a certain humility in being a parent. [00:35:00] And I think my way of interpreting what you said as well is that you do have to celebrate the small victories along the way. And I think that’s something that parents raising children with special needs are better at on average is celebrating the small victories. So thanks again for sharing. Is there anything else you’d like to say before we wrap up?

John Borling: Oh, it’s great to be with you again. I’ve held you in such high regard and the thing you’ve done for the Dads movement, if you will, and families in total in not just Illinois, but in America, even with world reach, is so commendable so blindingly important. And I think of my own little efforts here and there throughout 84 years now of activity and marching still, as then I am encouraged and diminished by your successes.

John Borling: So you keep doing what you’re doing. And I wish you and your gang the very best and all the families out there. If anyone has any interest in following up, [00:36:00] I do a little Sunday column, I have for over four and a half years. It was in the papers for a few years and now it’s a private subscription model. It’s really expensive though, it costs you a cup of coffee a month for this Sunday column called “The Third Degree.” Irrespective of “The Third Degree,” which argues you make your own decisions on matters public and private, I just reserve the right to ask hard questions on those same subjects. You can contact me at john@third-degreeUS.com. That’s your peril.

David Hirsch: Let’s give a special shout out to John Gardner, our mutual mentor for, in one way or not, helping connect us.

John Borling: As we said, as we spoke earlier, absolutely. God, we miss him, don’t we?

David Hirsch: Absolutely. John, thank you for taking the time and many insights. As a reminder, John is just one of the dads who’s part of the Special Fathers Network, a mentoring program for fathers raising a child with special needs. If you’d like to be a mentor father or are seeking advice from a mentor father with a similar situation to your own, please go to 21stCenturyDads.org.

David Hirsch: Thank you for listening to the latest episode of the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast. I hope you [00:37:00] enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. As you probably know, the 21st Century Dads Foundation is a 501c3 not for profit organization, which means we need your help to keep our content free to all concerned. Would you please consider making a tax-deductible contribution? I would really appreciate your support. John, thanks again.

John Borling: Best wishes, David.

Tom Couch: And thank you for listening to the Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast. The Special Fathers Network is a dad to dad mentoring program for fathers raising children with special needs. Through our personalized matching process, new fathers with special needs children match up with mentor fathers in a similar situation. It’s a great way for dads to support other dads. To find out more, go to 21stCenturyDads.org

David Hirsch: And if you’re a dad looking for help, or would like to offer help, we would be honored to have you join our closed Facebook group. Please go to Facebook.com, groups, and search “dad to dad.” Lastly, we’re always looking to share [00:38:00] interesting stories. If you’d like to share your story, or know of a compelling story, please send an email to David@ 21stCenturyDads.org.

Tom Couch: The Special Fathers Network Dad to Dad Podcast was produced by me, Tom Couch.

Tom Couch: Thanks again to Horizon Therapeutics, who believe that science and compassion must work together to transform lives. That’s why they work tirelessly to research, develop, and bring forward medicines for people living with rare and rheumatic diseases. Discover more about Horizon Therapeutics at HorizonTherapeutics.com.